Chapter 23
Oliver
Ever since that strange run-in in the hallway last week, Luke seemed off.
Not in an obvious way, not all the time, but something sat beneath the surface.
He hesitated around me, like he kept second-guessing himself.
I noticed it in the way conversations stalled on his end, how pauses stretched a beat too long.
These subtle shifts in demeanor, tone, posture, even breath were the kinds of details I’d learned to notice while living with Vincent.
While Luke’s behavior didn’t trigger the fear I’d known with Vincent, the sense that he was holding something back tugged at me, making me wonder if I’d done something wrong.
But my habit of assuming the worst in moments of ambiguity belonged to me, not to him.
Luke didn’t deserve to carry the baggage of my past. So I did what experience had taught me to do.
I waited and observed him, trying to dissect meaning in every move.
My observations were rewarded this morning with Luke reaching up into the highest cabinet for a roll of paper towels, his arm extending overhead, shirt riding up to reveal the indentations of the dimples at the base of his back.
I’d first glimpsed them on our camping trip.
I’d stared at them, feeling an absurd sort of injustice.
Not only was he one of the best people alive, but also visually exquisite in the most specific and tempting of ways.
Of fucking course he had Apollo dimples.
Because why wouldn’t he? Dimples were one of my personal weaknesses, and he carried them in his smile, in the curve of his back, and in the strength of his chin.
I wasn’t a conceited person, but I swore his entire being had been assembled for the express purpose of tormenting me with things I was powerless but to want, and forbidden to desire.
I tried not to stare, I did, but I stood there anyway, ensnared by the sight. My fingers itched with the urge to touch him there.
Blinking hard, I swatted the thought away. I turned toward the sink, mug in hand, intending to rinse it out. But in the precise moment I leaned forward, something in me, whether my traitorous body or my heedless heart, overrode caution, and my fingertips grazed the bare skin above Luke’s waistband.
He froze, breath catching. Beneath my fingertips, his muscle gave a faint twitch, an involuntary reaction or perhaps held-in shiver. More curiously, his body leaned against my touch. Almost like he wanted it.
Was this what his weirdness was about? Did he .
. . was there something here? No, it couldn’t be.
You’re imagining things, projecting your longing into a moment where it doesn’t belong.
We’ve been over this a thousand times. Luke is not yours to envision like that.
You have to stop thinking he wants you back.
Before reason could intercept the urge, I traced the pad of my index finger along the small of his back.
A soft exhale emerged—his soft exhale—well on its way to becoming a gasp. His back arched and head fell backwards.
My hand hovered, trembling with the instinct to back away and the ache to stay. Every sensible part of me screamed to move, to laugh it off, to claim some convenient excuse, but my body disobeyed, rooted in place from want and confusion.
As he turned to face me, sense finally caught up with my actions. I stepped back, dropping my gaze, unwilling to see his expression. “I . . . sorry,” I rushed to say, shame rushing in to mop up the space wonder had just vacated.
Luke’s hand closed around my shoulder. “Ollie,” he said his voice saturated in a different kind of softness from his usual compassionate gentleness.
This came out heavy with . . . nope, didn’t matter what I thought I detected, my blasted ears were tricking me into hearing what I wanted to. Still, I lifted my eyes to his.
“I like when you touch me. Please don’t be sorry for it. Don’t take it back.” His fingers caressed my collarbone before dropping to his side.
How was I supposed to interpret that? It seemed impossible to hope that after all these months it meant something more, something deeper, but it sure seemed to live in a different category than even Luke-branded affection.
He never spoke to Ezra this way. I wanted to ask him what he meant, if he spoke from a strictly platonic sense or if he meant it in a different way.
I wanted reassurance and clarity and permission all at once.
But pressing him for definitions felt unfair.
If he hadn’t meant it romantically, my asking would only box him into expectations he didn’t belong in.
Just like my inconvenient feelings, I swallowed the questions; I would choke on them before I insisted Luke conform to some black-and-white, societal concept of desire.
“I like it when you touch me too,” I whispered. “I like that I’m safe in your arms. I’ve always been safe with you.”
They were truths that broke me, because I knew he wouldn’t hear them the way I meant them, but they healed me too, because with Luke, I never had to worry if he would suddenly become dangerous.
Running his fingers through my hair, he said, “I’m glad.”
I couldn’t respond with anything other than a nod. Speaking risked asking for more than he was ready to give.
“I should . . .” Luke gestured toward the counter, where his travel mug sat empty and his breakfast untouched.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Of course.”
Shuffling aside, we both returned to our routine.
But the interaction followed me through the rest of the day like a melody I couldn’t stop humming. It pulsed beneath my concentration while I worked. It stirred in my mind while I made dinner, looping again and again as I asked myself the same question. What if it meant something?
Luke came home a little after six. “It smells fantastic in here. Did you make bread?” he asked as he walked into the kitchen.
“Sourdough. I thought it would go with the pasta I’m cooking.” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Mac and cheese.”
His eyes lit up. “Macaroni. Macaroni. Macaroni,” he chanted while doing a silly shimmy. “That’s it, I’m keeping you forever. You’re never allowed to leave.” Then, almost sheepishly, he added, “I mean that in a fully consensual, non-possessive, no emotional coercion intended kind of way.”
“Duly noted,’ I said. “No coercion detected. Though for clarity’s sake, I do have a follow-up question.”
“Hit me.”
“Are you saying if I moved out you’d chase me down and beg me to come back?”
Walking up behind me, he grabbed my hand, turning me to face him, cupping the underside of my jaw, his thumb tracing my chin.
“I would follow you anywhere you wanted to go, Ollie. But if you ever genuinely wanted to move out, I’d help you pack.
I’d carry the boxes and drive you to your new place in an instant. ”
But what do you want? Do you want me here with you like I want to be with you?
Would you fight for the chance to be with me?
I thought. More questions that wouldn’t be fair to ask him.
Luke honored my agency, he always had. It might not be what I wanted to hear, but it meant something that he wanted me to live on my own terms.
“You would?” I said, not trusting my voice to speak above a whisper.
“Of course I would. My role was always to make sure you had somewhere solid to stand while you figured out what you wanted to do next, not to keep you here if you decided it was time to move on. I’m kinda like an emotional spotter, helping you lift the weight until you’re confident you can carry it on your own. ”
“And when I can carry it on my own?”
His thumb swiped my jaw again. “Only you get to decide what that looks like. But I never want to be the thing that keeps you from building your own life. I never want to stand in the way of you doing what’s right for you.
I only wanna be there. I hope wherever you go, that you’ll still let me be a part of your life. ”
Christ. This man. This generous, infuriatingly wonderful man with his love-shaped sentiments that never crossed over into confessions. The damn organ inside my chest didn’t know whether to hope or harden, to remain open or finally learn to let him go.
“And if what’s right for me is to stay here?”
“If staying is what’s right for you, then cool.
That’s the plan and we stick with it.” Before I could melt into the sentiment he added, “Besides, with you here I get homecooked carbs and baked goodies at all times. If you moved out, I’d have to relearn how to feed myself like an adult, and I’m not ready to backslide into protein bars full time. ”
I knew for a fact that Luke ate a highly nutritious diet without me. “You’d survive.”
“I would technically survive. But thrive? Questionable. Highly questionable. I’ve tasted luxury. You can’t just put that genie back in the bottle.”
“So you keep me around because of what I give you? You sure know how to charm a guy,” I drawled.
“They do say the way to a guy’s heart is through his stomach, so really, you should be charmed.”
“Right. Nothing makes a man feel cherished quite like learning he’s been reduced to a housewife from the fifties,” I deadpanned.
“Now listen here, toots,” he said, leaning one elbow against the counter. “A fella works all day at his very important man job to keep a roof over our heads, the least he deserves is a hot meal and a pretty smile when he walks through the door.”
“Mind your tongue, dear. I am about one sentence away from unionizing, and then where would you be.”
“Fair,” he conceded. “For real, though. I don’t keep you around for what you give me. I want you around because my life is better when you’re in it.”
My chest grew far too tight, like my ribs were closing around my heart to keep it from leaping at him, unchecked and unprotected. Luke said all the right things, but being wanted incidentally wasn’t the equivalent of being chosen intentionally. “Same,” I whispered.